


You might be right but I don't care

by lucifel



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015), Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Background Relationships, Child Soldiers, Gen, Han Solo's A+ Parenting, Humor, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Kylo the stupid teenager not Kylo the school shooter, On the Scale of Luke Skywalker to Jamie Lannister...
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-01
Updated: 2018-02-01
Packaged: 2019-03-12 06:44:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,599
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13541901
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lucifel/pseuds/lucifel
Summary: Finding out that your uncle is in love with your mom is pretty fucked up.  Telling your dad, only to discover that he thinks it’s hot is... well it’s a pretty solid reason for a teenage boy to run away from home.





	You might be right but I don't care

**Author's Note:**

> The first time I saw The Last Jedi I couldn't help thinking, "There's no way teenage Kylo Ren was popular enough to recruit six force users for Snoke." And then this happened.

Ben Solo, aged fifteen, cannot read minds. He can tear things out of people’s brains, sure, but he’s about as subtle as an At-At at a protest and Uncle Luke usually recommends that he just leave it to one of the others because _teamwork_.

Unfortunately, Ben doesn’t need to read his dad’s mind to know what Han is thinking right now. Unfortunately, Ben knows his dad well enough to recognize that this is the look he gets when there is a big pay day coming and Mom’s got a pretty new dress and… and… “OH MY GOD!” Ben shouts, “You think it’s hot! You – it – that is – that is DISGUSTING!!” In the background, just out of the holocam’s field of vision, Chewie roars something that sounds like agreement.

Han, to his credit, immediately looks abashed.

Leia, Ben thinks darkly, will be relieved to know that a decade of, “not in front of the kid Han!” has finally sunk in. Albeit two seconds too late to matter.

“Now Son,” Han begins, “Your uncle, your mom, and I…”

“Have been through a lot together. Yeah, I know. You’ve said it before.”

“Right. And sometimes when people share life altering experiences , they –.”

“THEY DO NOT DEVELOP A DESIRE TO BECOME INCEST TWINS. NO ONE SANE CHOOSES TO BE INCEST TWINS. WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU?”

“Ben –.”

“I JUST told you that your wife’s brother got drunk and attacked me with a lightsaber because I found out he wants to -.”

“Ben!”

“Any sane person would find that disturbing.”

“Bennie!”

“Any SANE father would want to get his son the KRIFF away from his sick pervert of an uncle! BUT NO, not the great Han Solo. HE finds it HOT!” His parents hate it when he addresses them in the third person.

Ben stops to catch his breath. He can feel his face burning and his chest heaving. His face has probably gone unattractively purple and blotchy the way it does in Mom’s holovids of his toddler tantrums. (Her face gets blotchy too though. Ben comes by his tantrums honestly.)

In the holoring, Han appears at last to be thinking. “Wait.” He says after a brief pause. “Ben, is your uncle _actually_ passed out drunk right now or is this one of your harebrained schemes to get your Mom and I to let you move home?”

Ben is not proud of choosing to slice the holoring console in half with his light saber but, in the moment, it’s the only way he can deal with his dad.

 _Fine then._ Ben thinks as he storms towards one of the meditation chambers, _if Dad won’t listen, maybe someone else will._

*

Many years and many holoring consoles later, with a great deal of introspection and some little regret, Ben will conceded that if he hadn’t lost his temper like that he could’ve just called his mom.

 _She_ would’ve actually listened.

And probably hit Uncle Luke with her shoe.

Repeatedly.

At least that's what she tells him when he finally calls fifteen years after the fact.

*

Hours later, in the darkness that comes just before dawn, Ben finds himself sneaking away through the jungle towards the shuttle Master Snoke said he’d sent. Ben isn’t entirely sold on Master Snoke’s whole “embrace the dark” platform – but since Snoke isn’t some hypocrite pretending to be all about goodness and light when he mostly just wants to bang Ben’s mom (and possibly his dad), Ben figures he’ll take his chances.

Ben hates the jungle. He hates the snakes and the mud and the creepy crawly things. He also hates how the younger kids always manage to sneak up on him in the underbrush when they train like they're -.

“We aren’t anything _like_ Ewoks Ben!” Like that.

Ben does not scream and jump in a circle, light saber swinging wildly. He checks his surroundings manfully. Like a Jedi. 

“You totally just screamed Ben.”

“Yep.”

“He totally did.”

Ben glares as hard as he can at the six little nuisances ruining his escape. The effect is lost in the dark.

“What in the – what are you doing out here?” He asks. “You’re supposed to be in bed.”

In a creepy sort of tandem, the girls all shrug.

Nissa, the oldest, takes a step forward to explain – but Lorna, the youngest, beats her to it. “Misha woke up and readed your brain when you were shouting at your Dad and she said you were running away because you think Master Luke is a pervert and Nissa said that if that’s true then we should run away too and Senka said you’d know since he’s your uncle and Seska agreed and Emwi didn’t want to get up but it was no fair to leave her behind so we made her come too. What’s a pervert?”

Ben does his best to parse her sentence, fails, and pulls at his hair instead. “That’s not - why would – he’s no – he’s not going to _do_ anything to any of _you!_ You’re little girls. That’s sick.”

“Then why are you leaving?”

“Because.”

“Because what?”

“Because! Ok!”

“What does that even mean?”

“I’m leaving because Uncle Luke wants to bang my mom and my dad thinks that’s hot and NO ONE wants to think about their parents having sex! Or wanting threesomes! Or…” Ben trails off as he remembers, belatedly, that Nissa is only thirteen and that everyone else he’s talking to isn’t even close enough to puberty to have been forced through Uncle Luke’s embarrassing Sex Talk yet. He’s extremely grateful that the dark hides the flush on his face. “Look,” he says, eager to avoid answering the questions he can _feel_ them forming, “let’s just go back to bed ok?”

He can always run away tomorrow night.

“Um…” Senka begins.

“We can’t actually.” Seska finishes.

“Why not?” Ben asks.

The girls look at each other. Then as one, they seem to decide that it’s Lorna’s job to answer.

Lorna is four.

And very cute.

Ben has been known to get suckered into doing her chores and braiding her hair for her when she employs the dastardly tactic of making puppy eyes and saying “please”.

“We um…” Lorna scuffs her left toe into the dirt. “We maybe burneded our dorm down. As a distraction.” Then she holds up her arms to be carried because she’s learned by now that Ben yells less when you snuggle him.

*

A hundred yards away, in the cockpit of the first order stealth shuttle _Windstorm_ , Ensign Armitage Hux, age nineteen, prepares himself to meet the “very important asset” his transport had been diverted to retrieve. He even has a little speech prepared.

He will receive one of the worst disappointments of his nascent career when said “important asset” turns out to be an acne riddled teenage boy arguing with six too many little girls.

Luckily, Ensign Hux’s shuttle has seven bunks in its cramped living quarters.

Unluckily, neither Ben nor the girls thinks to ask who those bunks were for. Or where the shuttle was diverted from. Or who had been on board when it landed.

*

Many years later, while training a scavenger from Jakku, it will occur to Luke Skywalker – quite suddenly – that fifteen year old Ben had had no experience at all with double ended staff weapons.

Which implies that it might not have been Ben who killed his fellow Padawans. In fact, it was more likely it had been multiple someones. Like, say, six members of Snoke’s Praetorian guard.

Leia does, in fact, beat him with the flat of her shoe when he finally admits this to her.

*

Despite all that he will later claim, Kylo Ren is not born in the dark heart of a crumbling castle perched on the fiery shores of Mustafar’s Lava Lake. _Kylo Ren_ is born in the copilot's seat of the shuttle _Windstorm_ under a spray of cookie crumbs and two hair brushes.

It’s Ensign Hux who starts it. Hux, not having any sisters, is unfamiliar with the concept of _playing dress up_ and does not understand why this game requires Ben to subject himself to having his hair brushed and braided by Emwi and Lorna who are clearly causing him pain. Is it a form of training? Like being dunked in a frozen pond and then forced to swim back to shore had been? He watches the process with fascination, catches himself watching, and (as was his habit at the academy) forces himself to say something scathing in case anyone noticed.

Unfortunately, “So _you lot_ are going to be the new Sith Lords of the galaxy?” is the best he can come up with.

“Absolutely not.” Senka replies.

“That would be gross.” Seska agrees.

“The Sith grow horns and their eyes turn yellow and stuff and we’re too pretty for that.” Misha adds mater-of-factly.

They’re all squeezed into the cockpit together. Hux doesn’t understand why. Or how.

It’s not a very large cockpit.

At least that's the excuse he'd made for letting Lorna sit in his lap and ask him inane questions before Ben and the others joined them.

“So what are you then?” Hux asks, “Jedi?”

“Well… no.” Ben replies.

“Not anymore.”

“The Jedi aren’t allowed to use the dark side of the force.”

“And Ben says we have to learn how the dark works.”

“To be better at using it.”

“And stronger.”

They all talk over each other, the end of one sentence flowing so quickly into the beginning of the next that Hux has trouble tracking who’s saying what. But he gets the point.

“So what are you then?” Hux asks.

No one has an answer for him.

Then, to his great surprise, Emwi, (who Hux has privately labeled “the quiet creepy one”), says, “We’ll be the Knights of Ren. Like in that bed time story Ben told Lorna the other night.”

“The Knights of Ren?”

“Yeah!” Lorna enthuses. “They weren’t Jedi OR Sith! They were Knights! Who defended the Emperor! Against invaders and assassins and stuff. We’ll be the Knights of Ren!”

And just like that it’s decided.

Nissa Ren.

Misha Ren.

Seska Ren.

Senka Ren.

Emwi Ren.

Lorna Ren.

And - uh…. “Ben Ren! _Ben Ren!_ That is the stupidest name I have ever heard.” And Hux is laughing so hard he nearly falls out of his chair. A few of the others are snickering as well. Luckily for Hux, Lorna is now sitting in Ben’s lap and thus preventing him from picking Hux up by the scruff of his neck and slamming his head into the nearest hard surface. Hux does not find Ben's ability to potentially toss him around attractive. At all.

Lorna can tell Ben is upset though, and waves her half eaten cookie in his face as an offering of peace. Emwi gives up on brushing his hair and pats his head.

“He doesn’t have to be Ben” Misha offers.

“Not anymore.”

“Then what will you call him?” Hux asks.

Again, it is Emwi who has the answer. “He can be Commander Kylo.” She supplies. “Like when we play make believe. But for real.”

Hux doesn’t understand how they have _time_ for so many games. His own childhood had borne no resemblance to this. He also does not say, _Kylo Ren. I like the sound of that._

 

*

Many years later, while stalking through the ruins of what had been her childhood home, Emwi Ren will find a half decayed sheet of flimsi with a handwritten essay on it. The writing she will identify as Ben Solo’s. The words will be too faded to read. Except for the comments left in the margin by Luke.

“ _Ben, you have to actually READ the book before writing your assignments. The Knights of Ren defended the people AGAINST the Emperor’s tyranny. Not the other way around. Come see me._ ”

In that moment Emwi will realize two things. First, that Lorna’s favorite bedtime stories had probably been Ben Solo’s half-assed homework assignments. And, second, that this was a sign from the force.

*

They arrive on Mustafar just in time. Any longer and the cabin fever would’ve driven them to violence. Hux can tell as he watches them prepare to leave that they’re frightened. He should have no qualms about abandoning them to their fate. He’s done it with recruits for the storm trooper program often enough that it should be old hat.

And yet.

And yet something causes him to catch Nissa and Kylo by the arms as they prepare to lead the others off the Windstorm. “You’ll have to kill.” He tells them bluntly. “To survive in there.” He says, nodding towards the castle with his chin. “So keep your weapons close.”

Ben is the only one with a lightsaber.

The others only have training weapons and the blasters Hux doesn’t yet know they stole from his small arms locker.

“We’ll have to _kill people_?” Lorna asks.

“We’d have had to kill people as Jedi too.” Misha offers.

“Really?”

“Really.”

Lorna thinks for a second, then hesitantly, “But Master Luke said…”

Nissa’s face does something complicated, and the twins exchange a glance. “Master Luke is a man.” She snaps.

“And it’s not like we’re going back to a Coruscanti ghetto.” Misha adds.

Of them all, Ben Solo had been the only one to have parents who hadn’t abandoned him. Or sold him.

*

They do have to kill.

In fact, they end up having to kill a lot. Storm Troopers. Guards. Officers. Prisoners. _A lot_. It's not so bad at first, and Ben and Nissa shield the younger children from the worst of it. But, ultimately, childhood on Mustafar is not the same as childhood at a Republic protected Jedi academy. It’s better than childhood in a Coruscanti ghetto or a First Order academy or a Storm-trooper program would have been – but it is also not the safe, predictable life they might otherwise have led. No one ever voices this. Ever. Even after.

Snoke is a mostly absent master, content to let them run wild and fend for themselves outside of combat training. Misha ensures they are safely sheltered. Ben keeps them fed. Seska and Senka steal datapads, and holovids, and scraps of old tech to keep them educated and entertained. Nissa does most of the killing. And, to everyone’s surprise, it is Hux (first ensign, then lieutenant, then captain) who keeps them supplied with weapons and armor and eventually their own shuttle. (Hux tells himself that he makes the thrice a year trips to Mustafar to curry favor with Minister Snoke. Who will be useful to him. One day. He is not entirely wrong.)

By the time Hux makes Major, each of the Knights of Ren have secured a lightsaber of their own and his blasters and vibro blades are no longer needed.

By the time Hux makes Colonel, they’ve begun wearing those hideous, featureless helmets.

Hux never asks them why, but it’s easy enough to guess. Kylo’s knights had all been beautiful children. They’d likely grown into beautiful women. 

Beauty didn’t get you far in the First Order. Beauty made you a target.

It is not until Hux makes General that he sees them all together, mask-less, again.

By now, Hux has been given command of the Finalizer. By now, Hux has been forced to work alongside Kylo for almost two hundred cycles. By now, Hux (ever the over achiever), has imagined two hundred and sixteen potential ways to rid himself of Kylo Ren by means of bloody, bloody murder. Because Kylo Ren is an overgrown child who runs through equipment and soldiers like he’s never heard the words _budget_ , _planning,_ or _finite resource_ in his life. (If Hux has had other thoughts about Kylo's destructive tendencies. If he's admired his arms in the training rooms and thought that he'd really grown into his ears - if Hux has occasionally gotten hard during one of Kylo's tantrums from the sheer _power_ the knight commands... well, Kylo is shit at mind reading so it's not like he's noticed.) 

“It isn’t really his fault he’s like that.” Misha tells him when Hux greets them in his hanger bay at the end of a week long mission. Ren had pushed past Hux the second he’d walked off his shuttle, Lorna running after him. (Hux will learn, later, that this was the day Ren lost his nice normal lightsaber and replaced it with that unstable red mess.) The others are bloody, mud splattered, and carrying bags of what Hux suspects are loot and body parts. “Don’t be mad at him.” She says, patting him sympathetically on the arm.

Hux has never gotten used to Misha’s habit of plucking thoughts from his mind and replying to them as if he’d spoken out loud, but he does at least know better than to flinch. Or to acknowledge that Ren ignoring him had in any way affected him. “Don’t worry.” Hux tells her, “I know better than to waste the energy.”

Nissa, removing her helmet, gives Hux a _look_. He can tell she doesn't’ believe what he’s said. He glares up at her, wondering when she’d gotten so tall. Behind her, one of the twins giggles. The other snorts.

They are awful. All of them. Hux regrets every last sweet he snuck them when they were small.

Hux should assign an Ensign to show them to their quarters. Instead, he leads them there himself. It is a strategically sound decision to expand his power base by forging close ties with the Knights of Ren. He is not, in any way, showing off by leading them the long way around his ship so they can see the shine of her halls and the crisp salutes his officers give.

It all goes well until Kylo rejoins them.

“What’s happened?” He asks immediately, “What’s wrong?”

Hux wants to snap that _nothing is wrong_ and that of course _nothing has happened_ because this is _Hux’s ship_. But Ren isn’t speaking to him. Ren isn’t even looking at him. Ren's focus is behind him. He is intent on Emwi. Who is blanching paler than should be possible for her complexion. Hux watches Emwi, then watches as, one by one, the Knights of Ren turn to look at a group of Lieutenants strolling away from them.

In the sudden, deafening silence, Hux can hear their banter. Likely carried to their ears through Seska’s deft manipulation of the force.

“Do you think they let that ugly bastard fuck them?” One asks, laughing.

“I'd make them take it if I were their _master_.” Another says. “Gods. Who let _him_ have all the pretty ones?”

“The blue haired one’s good.” The third says, voice low, “Had her when I was stationed on the _Eclipse_. Little bitch was a virgin even. Convinced her she was in love with me! I –.” He screams suddenly as his tongue is ripped out of his head and all three Lieutenants are dragged across the floor on their backs. Every soldier, officer, and technician within hearing distance freezes and turns to watch.

The Knights of Ren are furious and as is typical when they throw a tantrum en masse, they are un-neccessarily... messy in their retribution.

The first Lieutenant gets his eyes gouged out and his nose torn off. The vicious twist of her hand under her cloak tells Hux that it is Nissa who does this.

The second has his abdomen slashed open by Senka’s light saber so that Seska can pull out his intestines.

The third… Hux can’t tell which Knight is ripping off which body parts but he eventually bleeds enough for them to drown the first one in his blood. And the whole time, from the corner of his eye, Hux watches Kylo ignore the bloodbath to gather a shaking Emwi into his arms.

“I’m sorry,” She whispers, “Master I -. We -. I should be punished for -.”

Ren kisses her head, eyes on the others. Hux’s chest twists with… _something_ at the tenderness he shows. “You have nothing to apologize for little one.”

“But I – I was weak. He -. I _wanted -._ ”

“ _He_ was weak.” Ren tells her. “He was unworthy of you.” And he lets her smoother her sobs into his shoulder. He does not glare, he does not yell. When he turns his eyes onto Hux, there is nothing in them but sadness and confusion.

General Armitage Hux cannot read minds like a force user, but this expression he can read. This expression he understands.

 _I’ve failed,_ is what it says. _I’ve failed them._

*

Not so many years later, when Hux comes to with a dry mouth and an aching head in the back of an Upsilon Class command shuttle, Hux will remember the expression on Kylo Ren’s face as he'd held Emwi that day and curse himself with every fiber of his being for not realizing Kylo had looked at Rey whoeverthefuck from wherever the fuck that same way.

The shuttle, being over crowded with force users on their way to join the resistance, will not be the best place for him to hold a screaming match with his former co-commander. He does it anyway. (He does not - he absolutely does not - accuse Ren of flirting with the scavenger. And he is not at all soothed by Ren's aghast assertion that _She's Lorna's age Hux!_. He is a consummate professional who focuses his rage on the fact that they have apparently sabotaged his Starkiller weapon and might be dragging him directly to his imminent execution). 

Millicent, who will always and forever be Hux's favorite, gouges a nice deep scratch down Ben Solo’s stupid face for him.

It scars.

*

**Author's Note:**

> Concrit welcome. Comments loved. I wrote this all in one sitting at two in the morning with no beta so I'm guessing there are some tense issues amongst other things. 
> 
> If anyone is curious:  
> \- Hux hates Lorna because she’s been asking him awkward questions he doesn't know the answer to since she was five. Also because she's Kylo's favorite and he's spoiled her rotten.  
> \- Emwi has a speeder that Hux custom built for her. It was a birthday present from Kylo who paid Hux with a murder and a kitten. That kitten grew up into Millicent.  
> \- Unfortunately, Kylo is Millicent's least favorite human. This is because he refuses to let her sleep on his head despite the head of hair that she was CLEARLY meant to nest in and she dislikes humans who won't obey.  
> \- Ben started wearing the helmet because the twins made fun of his ears. (Then Misha made everyone else wear them too because Ren is their leader.)


End file.
